Missing out on national holidays isn’t so bad when you’re a Cornell graduate. There aren’t many Russian national holiday’s that people take off, but working in the AH I’m guaranteed to get them off.

I spent Sunday in Оргтруд (Orgtrud), a small community of individual houses. From first glance it looks like a neighborhood that was probably rich a century or so ago, but has since gone abandoned and then re-inhabited by vagrants. That’s actually how a lot of Russia looks, in passing, to the uncaring. The houses and people who live in Оргтруд are actually in good repair and have all the ameneities of home. Most yards are fenced off and every square meter of land is covered with rows of vegetables and fruits. They are by no means self sufficent, but most of their diet consists of all natural food from their own backyard. Add to that, the gardens are all worked by those who live there, its a very healthy lifestyle.
That evening my host father, Yuri, and I played cards with some guys at his garage. He parks his car about 10 minutes from the apartment in parking lot of garages. Underneath his, the ground has been dug out for food storage and so working under a car is easy. He dug it out himself, very cool. The game we played was дурак (Durak -> Fool) the idea being, the last guy with cards is the Дурак. Needless to say, I’ve played before and not once was I the дурак despite several rounds of all 3 other guys trying to make me lose.

I promised a photo from Moscow. Now I deliver: